Trusting Our Writerly Selves

“It makes you wonder. All the brilliant things we might have done with our lives if only we suspected we knew how.”

—Ann Patchett, Bel Canto

In this week’s episode (#28) of The Scribbling Woman podcast, we talk about learning to trust ourselves as writers…

• No matter what little niggles of self-doubt find their way in
• No matter how “successful” other writers are
• No matter how uncertain results are in this confusing publishing climate
• No matter what “they” say—whoever “they” are in your mind

We need chutzpah. And we need to remember the spirit that gave us this gift and guides us in using it. 

And there’s one more thing… and a story

As long as we don’t allow self-trust, we won’t know all that we’re capable of. 

Here’s a story. Yeah, I mostly write fiction, but this is a true one.

I started my journey as an author writing for teenagers because that was the brand of person I knew. Teaching high school does that for you. Or to you, I’m not sure which. It was going well. I wrote for every teen publication in the American Christian world, and in those days, there wasn’t a denomination that didn’t have one. I’d had four books for adolescents published, and I was becoming known in my small world as the queen of teen. Okay, maybe that was just in my own mind. 

Somewhere in there, I also wrote some pieces for Focus On the Family’s Clubhouse and Clubhouse Jr. magazines. I didn’t always see eye to eye, spiritually speaking, with the folks at Focus, but I never wrote anything I didn’t believe, and they were great to work with. 

So much so that one day, out of the blue, I received a phone call from a lady named Gwen Ellis, who was the acquisitions editor of children’s books, again, at Focus. She said the person who headed up the youth publications had contacted her and said, “Get this lady to write some books for us.”

My delight rate went up, until Gwen told me they wanted something for the 8-to- 12-year old audience. Not my oh-so-familiar teens. Y’know what I said? 

“Thanks so much for thinking of me, but I write for teenagers.”

She told me to think about it and I said I would, though I had no intention of doing anything of the kind. What did I know about that age group? Never mind that my own daughter was now 14, which meant I’d actually raised a middle grade kid. Or that as the artistic director of a children’s theater I’d been doing workshops with said middle graders for about five years. Yeah, but what did I know, right?

Fortunately, I told my husband about the conversation. And even more fortunately he said, “Are you out of your mind? Call her back!”

I gave him the same arguments. He came back with, “So use smaller words and shorter sentences.”

I still wasn’t convinced, but I did call Gwen, and she invited us to meet with her in Santa Cruz where she’d be at a writer’s conference. But I was a teacher. I lived in Reno. I couldn’t just take off work and drive however many miles—

Yeah, so a week later I called in sick, and Jim and I drove in our little Mazda Rx-7 to take Gwen to breakfast. We crammed her into the passenger seat with me, which in hindsight indicates it was all meant to be, because it was a decidedly ungraceful ride. 

Over pancakes, she said she’d looked over the three possible ideas I’d sent her and had chosen the one I was least excited about, but which my aforementioned daughter had said I should do: some kind of American history thing. 

“Put together a proposal for me to take to the board,” Gwen said. “But that’s just a formality. We love your writing, especially your voice. You really know kids this age.”

Jim gave me a look that clearly said, “Do I have to put duct tape over your mouth?”

So I agreed. And after we dropped Gwen off—she was pretzelesque by that time—we went for a walk on the beach. At one point, Jim stopped me and turned me to face him and said, “Your life may be about to change.”

He wasn’t wrong. On the way home, the 30-book Christian Heritage Series was born, and so was my entire journey as a writer. Year later, it wasn’t me who named myself “The Queen of Tween.” It was my readers.

What would happen if…

Granted, that was a different era in publishing. But my point is that if we don’t trust the fact that we know things we don’t even think we know, we may miss opportunities. We might bypass doors that don’t appear to have our name on them. We might allow our own lack of trust in who we are to keep us from trusting what is meant to be. 

What would happen if you pondered the possibilities posed by someone else? What if you let someone you trust nudge you in a direction you hadn’t considered? What if you said, “Why not?”

Ponder that, will you? 

Nancy Rue